And The Bridge Is Love

£6.99

This wide-ranging programme of English music for strings includes the World Première recording of Howard Goodall's moving And the Bridge is Love, in which Julian Lloyd Webber plays cello, and of William Lloyd Webber's The Moon, only performed for the first time in 2014. There are also established classics such as Elgar's Introduction and Allegro, Op. 47, as well as novelties in the case of the never-before-recorded arrangements by Elgar's friend and biographer W.H. Reed of the two Chansons.

ROMA / March Funebre

£6.99

RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra | Jean-Luc Tingaud

The success of Bizet's opera Carmen has overshadowed the rest of his output, but this fascinating orchestral programme, which includes a number of seldom performed works, reveals more of his talent for writing colourful, atmospheric and melodic music. The Overture in A was Bizet's first orchestral work and unperformed in his lifetime, while the Marche funèbre was originally the prelude to an opera about love and vengeance, now lost.

MASS IN G MAJOR

£6.99

Elora Festival Singers | Noel Edison

The powerful Mass in G major, dedicated to the memory of Poulenc's father, is notable for its daring use of tonality, though the playfulness of his ‘Les Six’ period is not absent. In the Sept Chansons, set to surrealist texts, and in the two sets of Motets—both very personal and penitential—Poulenc generates a huge range of emotion.

Guillaume Tell

Performed for the first time in its original uncut version, this production of Guillaume Tell was the jewel in the crown of the 25-year history of the 'Rossini in Wildbad' opera festival. Rossini's final, great, operatic masterpiece is a story of liberation, the oppressed Swiss attaining their ideal of emancipation by hounding the tyrannical Habsburgs out of their country. Although it was composed for the complex demands of the Paris Opéra, numerous dances, choruses and arias were dropped for reasons of practicality. These are restored in the present recording which also includes the stunning finale of the shorter 1831 version of the opera.

Symphony No. 48 'Visions of Andromeda'

£6.99

Eastern Music Festival Orchestra | Gerard Schwarz

Alan Hovhaness's remarkable legacy of 67 symphonies and hundreds of other works stands as a testimony to one of the most individual musical voices of the 20th century. Written when Hovhaness was 25, the Prelude and Quadruple Fugue represents not only his mastery of counterpoint but in its sweeping climactic form is also one of his most exciting works. The Soprano Saxophone Concerto is like a melodic tone poem or aria, and considered the most Romantic concerto Hovhaness ever wrote. "Inspired by the wonders and mysteries of astronomy" and appearing here in its première recording, the Symphony No. 48 'Vision of Andromeda' expresses the vastness of this galaxy through giant melodies, shimmering orchestral colours and a transcendent apotheosis.